INTRA-PARTY DIALOGUE

In public opinion, there is a persistent „aspiration“ for a social order that would be based on socijal justice, in which political parties would play the role of guardian angels of citizens and liberal values. Neverthless, the balance on the scales of history has generally tilted towards political realism, which has always been more interested in the issue of conquering and maintaining power, as faithfully testified by Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes. The emergence of modern political parties after 1789 did not significantly change this pragmatic course of development of politics and political institutions. The fact that citizens received the formal right to „vote“ did not significantly affect the power relationship that remained in the party headquarters. The old „elite“ parties were replaced by „mass“ and „catch-all“ parties for which the party base was significat as a raw number and not as a resource for intra-party dialogue. The power of the party was thus concentrated in the central office (party in central office), and over time, as subsidies to parties from the state increased, the power of the party moved from central party office to the public office (party in public office). In addition to the development that is inherent in every system including political parties, there is also an external influence on the power structure within the political party which occurs in the process of the globalization of economy, politics, and culture. Since the 1990s, Serbia, which had a significant break in parliamentary life during the communist period, has gone through these phases of „evolution“ that lasted for hundreds of years in European countries. Thus, political parties in Serbia have gone through the phases of „mass“ and „catch- all“ parties, approaching the model of a “party in public service“, and now, similar to modern European parties, they are literary „attacking“ state institutions. The forced development of political parties in Serbia resulted in a low level of political culture and political awareness of citizens, which means that different forms of civil political education are required.